


Smoke from the Wreckage

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Age Difference, And Makeouts with a Suit of Clothes, Angst, Angst and Humor, But The Point Still Stands, Demonstuck, F/M, Humor, Incorporeal Demons, John Is Such a Teenager, Karkat Is Cranky About Everything, M/M, Magic, Semi-Corporeal Crockery, Well I Mean He's in College, Well Such as My Humor Is Anyway, all the magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-28 17:05:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5098481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John does not believe that all that bleeds is still alive and he's got the noise-cancelling headphones to prove it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Can See You're Above Me

**Author's Note:**

> YES LET US EMBARK ON A NEW AU WHILE STUDIOUSLY AVOIDING EYE CONTACT WITH ALL OF THE OLD ONES
> 
> To be fair, this is mostly just a fic dump. I'm trying to clear out my computer. Most of why half the stories are sitting around here unfinished is because I can't write them currently, since I wrote them all cute and cute is never something I can maintain for long. Ie, you want the adorable ficlets to end with everyone getting murdered by a swamp monster, then I can totes hook you up. You want me to actually finish the plot, then you'll probably be waiting forever.
> 
> BUT THIS IS CUTE OKAY SO IF YOU HOLD OUT HOPE IN MY CAPACITY TO BE ENTERTAINING, YOU JUST GO AHEAD AND READ THIS SHIT.

“Oh my god,” booms the thirty foot tall smoke monster looming over the human teenager clutching his cell phone. “Three hundred years and someone finally lets me out. And what do I find? A fucking human. And,” the blackened vapors billow in a way that manages to express a great deal of indignation, “His fucking _sheep_.”  
  
John Egbert has currently resigned himself to taking cell phone pictures that will not prevent his death, nor will the audio of barking Collies. He’s been trying to round up his uncle’s flock with the latter. Now he’s mostly just holding onto the cell phone because being a stereotype makes him feel better. Death by giant smoke monster inarguably suggests his life is a B grade horror movie.  
  
You know what else? This is what John gets for venturing outdoors. Farms are horrible places. These sheep are possessed and want John to die (whether by Uncle Marvin or creepy smoke monster he cannot say; their exact motives are unclear). They literally sprinted into this cave. There is absolutely no grass here whatsoever.  
  
A random cave with an equally random vase, which John would not have knocked over if he’d actually seen the dumb thing, and about the time the churning column of black smoke erupting from broken pottery grew glowing red eyes the size of a flatscreen TV, death was inevitable. There is probably supposed to be some sort of paralyzed sense of awe, but all John can think is that he really hates these sheep and hopes they get eaten first.  
  
The smoke monster glares at him. John peers up in fascination, trying to figure out how a writhing doom cloud is able to express emotion. It seems to involve a lot of frothing brow-smoke.  
  
“Was her blindness hereditary?” The monster growls. “Did it come with accessorial deaf and idiotic for my pleasure?”  
  
“What,” John says.  
  
“You’re _her_ descendent.” The smoke monster waits for John to be impressed by this, and when it doesn’t happen, it grows arms. John skitters back, but all the monster does is cross them, apparently for the purpose of scowling darkly at the top of John’s head. “Terezi Pyrope’s brat. Only her hideous spawn could have released me from my confines.”  
  
“Dude, I just knocked over a piece of pottery,” John points out. The monster looks over at the vase. John forlornly snaps another photograph that does not focus. His cell phone is not helping a guy out today. “My mom’s name was Anne. And just as an aside, if you need someone’s specific descendent to come let you out, then why were you so surprised to see a human?”  
  
“You shall not sass me,” the monster says darkly. “I may not be able to eat you or your muttony companions, but I can still smite the everfuck out of you. Sass will not be happening this day, no sir.”  
  
John risks a longing glance towards the exit of the cave—he can still see the light, but it’s filmy and red-tinged and he’s pretty sure the pile of bones in front of it were bleating a couple of seconds ago. “…Right.”  
  
He decides to sit down. Maybe he’s a little more panicked about smoke demon than he wants to admit; his knees are wobbling.  
  
“So hey, what do you eat? Clouds?” He finds he wants to know. The glaring red eyes squint a little. “I mean, before you make with the smiting. Might as well chat?”  
  
There is a pause, while the cross-armed smoke demon presumably analyzes that question for sass.  
  
Long story short, John and the smoke demon split the slightly squished peanut butter and jelly sandwich he had in his pocket, another one of the sheep gets vaporized (nice), and John’s knees get less wobbly. It gradually becomes apparent that no, it’s not just him; for a massive, incorporeal smoke demon, this thing is not exactly terrifying. The demon—who tells John it will be called Karkat and seems somehow proud of this ridiculous name—asks John a few more times if he’s _sure_ he’s not related to the Pyrope person. John can’t really answer one way or another, since he’s never heard the name and the demon shouting about three hundred years of imprisonment might be tangentially related to this fact.  
  
Eventually, after a lot of smoky scowls, there’s a sound like a soda can hissing open and a breath of cool, clean summer air flows into the cave. The surviving sheep finally deign to clomp out, because hey, this was a nice vacation, but now it is time for grass. As John stares, Karkat folds into a pitch black mass in one corner, eyes vanished behind wreaths of smoke. John figures that is his cue to leave.  
  
He hesitates at the mouth of the cave, and glances back. Karkat is completely invisible in the shadows, if the demon is there at all. “Um,” John hazards, “Bye?”  
  
“Yes, go away John human,” the smoke monster tells him snidely. “Best of luck with your muttonbeasts and your inadequate intellect.”  
  
Sheesh. Rude.  
  
\----  
  
Of course, rude or not, John has to go back to the cave, just to see if Karkat is still there. It’s not like he could tell anyone; they already think he’s crazy. His uncle firmly believes that there’s this plague of insanity all humans are born with, only staved off by frequent contact with horses or something and John is mostly a stranger to rural living.  
  
Karkat is still there, in the exact same knot of darkness the demon camouflaged into when John left him. A glowing crimson eye blinks open when John cautiously calls its name.  
  
“Oh good, you are real,” John sighs, a bit relieved.  
  
“Of course I’m real!” The demon snaps, unfolding into a roiling, oversized mass yet again. “I’m over a thousand years old! I’m a hell of a lot more real than you’ll ever be, you insignificant little sputum-worm—“  
  
“I brought an extra sandwich,” John says, predicting that this might derail the ranting a little. He is correct. Karkat is extremely interested in his sandwich. John sits on the same patch of gritty rock he occupied last time, munching away. “So how come you haven’t left here yet? This place doesn’t look all that interesting.”  
  
Karkat sighs. “You may have broken my prison,” it mutters, “But I’m still bound to it. I can’t go anywhere.” The sandwich is further mangled with smoky teeth—it’s weird; Karkat has a mouth for sandwiches, but then when John blinks, it and the food are both gone? “Which sucks because after three hundred years, I’m really fucking hungry and I can hardly eat…” Its voice dips with revulsion, “ _Human_.”  
  
“Hey, I bet I’m fucking delicious,” John feels the need to protest, then immediately questions why all of his impulses are ridiculously stupid. “So, hey, you never really said. If human and sheep are both out, what’s your criteria for food?”  
  
“Plant matter,” Karkat says with a sniff. “I’m a vegetarian.”  
  
John’s heart sinks. “Uh, dude?” He holds his sandwich aloft, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but turkey is not a vegetable.”  
  
Karkat narrows its glowing eyes. “Is it breathing when I sink my fangs into its flesh?”  
  
“Uh,” John replies, intelligently.  
  
“There you go.”  
  
\----  
  
Karkat is not kidding about the plant matter thing, though. John was mostly screwing with the demon when he manages to roll a hay bale down to the cave, but Karkat devours it in under thirty seconds and John has never felt so sorry for hay in his life.  
  
“Kid,” Karkat growls the third time John hauls random armfuls of forest greenery into the cave for Karkat to horribly dismember. “What the hell are you even doing here?” John pauses with the tree bough he’s arguing with to wipe his sweaty face with his sleeve. Karkat sounds more bewildered than hostile, which is a new thing for the demon. John is sort of used to Karkat’s inexplicable hatred, and this makes the question really weird.  
  
“No reason,” John shrugs. “I’m just bored. My aunt and uncle only have dial up.”  
  
Smoke monster eyes narrow at him.  
  
“You may not believe this,” John tells him very seriously, putting his hands behind his back, “But the world has changed a lot in the past three hundred years. Smoke monsters are no longer a common daily occurrence. This is like meeting a celebrity for me—Karkat, I am so honored. You really have no idea.”  
  
“Is that so?” Karkat wavers.  
  
“Oh yeah,” John nods to him, all wide-eyed innocence. “In fact, I mean, if you had fingers and I had a notebook? I would be just begging for your autograph. Cause this is like a major life accomplishment for me, running into a smoke monster. Wow. _So_ much wow.”  
  
“I can fix that,” Karkat says, and John has enough time to think ‘oh cool, Karkat’s going to grow arms again’ before Karkat snaps its fingers—and John sees absolutely nothing like an autograph lying around. Until he looks down. His arm, specifically, is covered with a calligraphic, sharp-edged scrawl of bewildering symbols. He scrubs the area with his damp sleeve, without much hope.  
  
“There,” Karkat says, dissolving the hands and arms with a spirit of smug self-satisfaction. “Now you will have my autograph for all eternity. I have kindly engraved it upon your flesh, so all will know of your good fortune. Now go fetch me more plant matter, slave.”  
  
John groans.  
  
After appeasing Karkat with roughly three mid-sized trees, in aggregate, John convinces the demon to stick its tattoo somewhere a little less conspicuous. There is, apparently, no getting rid of it entirely, given that Karkat just laughed when he asked. John’s not sure he’s totally comfortable with the unholy inscription he now plays host to, or the fact that it designates a smoke monster with very loose definitions of vegetarianism. Karkat sure seems content about it. The smoke demon just does this thing where John is certain he’s being grinned at, even with the creature in question very much lacking a mouth.  
  
“That,” Karkat informs him on his way out, “Is the result of sass, John human. Beware.”  
  
Well, John is not terribly enthusiastic about having a demon tattoo on his ass, but you know. C’est la vie. And to tell the truth, he’s kind of impressed.


	2. With Ghosts in Such an Empty Shell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which John's impulses continue to be incredibly stupid and Karkat wonders if it's like talking to a brick wall with all humans, or just this one.
> 
> And there's sass.
> 
> Also, I fixed the pronoun issues. Woooo.

When it gets to the point where John doesn’t even have a reason to be there—there’s a nice stack of forest scavengings on the floor for later and no escapist sheep to be worried about—John takes a book along. Karkat made the mistake of revealing that its powers are not limited to sheep disintegration and instant tattooing—the demon can make handy balls of floating light appear. They are an excellent light source and John hasn’t read anything for a while. Karkat spends the time staring at John’s neck. John mostly ignores this.  
  
“Are you going to ask me for your three wishes or what?” Karkat demands. “Because sorry, kid; I do not do fulfillment. It’s damnation or suffering one way or another, so if you really want to ask, get it out of your system.”  
  
John flips a page in his book, “Nah, not really into wishes.”  
  
He gets to the part where the sexual tension has reached the point where it’s making him snicker—seriously, someone kiss someone already—before Karkat growls again. “I offer no protective services,” it says, expanding a bit so it has wiped out half the cave in endless blackness and looms over John’s head. “If you have another demon on your tail, you are to depart immediately, because I want no part in this tomfoolery. I will _help_ it eat you.”  
  
John puts down the book. “What kind of other stuff is out there?” There’s a brief stirring in his chest, almost like longing. It is not, after all, every day you knock over a lamp and get to know a supernatural entity as a result.  
  
“Ah, I see,” Karkat shrinks back and leans against the wall, managing to somehow recline there. John arches an eyebrow. “You’re a scholar. A knowledge-seeker. You come begging and prostrated to learn my ways. So be it, John Egbert; I will take you as my pupil. Know that it will be a dark and arduous road—“  
  
“Actually, that sounds like a lot of work,” John shuffles his book back open. “So let’s just forget I asked, okay?”  
  
Smoke monsters can deflate. This is fact.  
  
“You could at least pretend to be interested,” Karkat mutters and John experiences a brief moment where he wants to roll his eyes.  
  
“I’m interested,” he points out. “I could be in my room. I would rather be here.” _I’m just an adult_ , he wants to add, _So enthusiasm is a thing that doesn’t happen anymore_. He keeps that one to himself.  
  
“Yeah, so you can _read_ ,” the smoke monster goes on, sulking fully now. “You have left your room to read a fucking book. I demand to know why you have settled yourself here. What is your purpose and intention?”  
  
John thinks about it a moment, then shrugs a shoulder. “Worse places to hang out?”  
  
Karkat glares at him. “With a demon?”  
  
“With a demon,” John confirms. He flips to the next page. “It’s been a pretty boring summer.” Karkat makes a very rumbly sound. It sounds pissed enough that the noise really should rouse John from where he’s sprawled. It does manage to make him look up. So there’s that.  
  
“YOU,” Karkat booms in a tone thunderous enough to shake little pebbles from the cave ceiling. “You,” it hisses. Smoke is pouring off of it, swelling its form to a momentous size, and its eyes spit tongues of fire. “You _frustrate_ me.”  
  
John ends up grinning. “Aw, thanks!”  
  
Karkat appears to be thrown off track by this.  
  
“Not every day I get to frustrate a member of the legion of the damned,” John continues. “So thank you for your consideration. I appreciate it!”  
  
“You are,” Karkat says, slowly, as though it is testing the words, “…very odd.”  
  
John figures that is probably even more distinguishing—a massive smoke demon telling John that he’s the weird one—and he snorts half a laugh, raising his eyebrows Karkat’s way. “Really? You think so?”  
  
“I do,” the demon seethes. And then, in tones of the most vehement loathing, “You also have a very appealing smile.”  
  
“Uh oh.” John decides to go back to his book. “Sorry about that, buddy.”  
  
“…Continue smiling.”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
\----  
  
John brings two books next time. The first half hour is just snickering himself into severe asphyxiation over how incredibly irritated Karkat is about everything. The predictability of the plot. The moral spoonfeeding. Why have these two characters not kissed yet. The smoke monster then immediately demands the book John is reading. John hands it over. It is a simple thing to strike up snatches of conversation when John already has coaxed Karkat into being outraged.  
  
John has, of course, Googled Terezi Pyrope in vain, but he’s more curious about demon things. There was a time where John and his best friend Rose basically lived for the supernatural back in middle school and outgrowing the phase does not necessarily mean outgrowing the reality.  
  
Karkat tells him about the alphabet it tattooed its name onto John with—an old, dead language. John turns down the opportunity to learn it, but allows Karkat to tell him the story of the kingdom it originated in (which has a funny name) and the kings who made it relevant (which have VERY funny names) and the wars and famine and human greed that led to the language’s demise. Karkat shifts the tattoo onto John’s arm while they talk and John looks at the chunk of history he wears as Karkat lights the letters up and sounds them out. They don’t sound like ‘Karkat’.  
  
“Well, who is named with _syllables_?” Karkat snorts. “Immortals aren’t like you ape larvae. It’s the meaning that defines me. My title.” The demon stares very hard at John, and John finds he has it in him to ask.  
  
“What does yours say?”  
  
“The One Who Erodes,” Karkat says. It’s doing that thing where John knows it is grinning, even if the mouth isn’t there. A chill jitters up his spine this time. “I was there for the fall of that kingdom. I was there a lot.”  
  
“That’s…” John searches for the appropriate word. “Yeah, that’s disturbing. Very, very disturbing.”  
  
“All things change with time, John,” Karkat says, clearly smug over getting to deliver its punchline. “It is the way of mortality. All things are lost.”  
  
“Don’t I know it,” John mutters, and throws a book at Karkat’s smoky head, which he protests was an experiment to study change, ie, what sort of weird shapes Karkat’s body makes when it reforms. Karkat eventually lets John back down from the ceiling, which is nice, because all the blood has rushed into John’s head.  
  
“See you tomorrow,” Karkat grumbles, and then barks after him, “And with better reading material, thank you! What, do you want my eyes to boil out of my head?!”  
  
They don’t read a whole lot after that, though.  
  
\----  
  
On another occasion, John asks about what demons are like and spends the entire afternoon listening as Karkat tells him about demons and spirits and fey and Old Ones and a thousand other things. He can almost picture the things Karkat tells him stories about. The glare of red eyes makes him believe. Karkat’s is not a world he would do very well in, with its extremes of beautiful and bloody, but John prefers the worlds he would not do well in. He listens with his mouth half-open and his imagination sitting up and Karkat’s caustic voice is probably the way treasure sounds, all the more brilliant for its burial.  
  
“You’re smiling again,” Karkat accuses as John prepares to leave—the sun is going down and his uncle will kill him if he misses dinner; John’s life has not been extremely cushiony since the mystery sheep vaporization. John mostly gets by via pretending to be an incorrigible idiot.  
  
“Am not,” John says, and sticks his tongue out—this is the sort of thing that happens after being told fairy tales all day long. Inevitable shenanigans. Karkat’s eyes flash brighter.  
  
“But you _were_ ,” John hears softly when he turns his back. “Stupid human. Smile more.”  
  
John shakes his head and even if he tries, his mouth only twitches.  
  
After a week, this thing with Karkat has totaled more conversation than John has shared with anyone for at least two years (though that pales in comparison to three hundred years of solitude!). John asks questions about demon stuff, and Karkat asks a lot of questions about boring human stuff. John explains how genders and races work in this era, about school, about technology, about college, about dating, about life goals and peer pressure and all the ways you can disappoint your parents enough that they can’t stand you coming home over the summer.  
  
“What really happened?” Karkat asks.  
  
“Gee, I don’t know,” John says flatly. “Who is Terezi Pyrope?” John wouldn’t have needed to Google the name if Karkat wasn’t so irritatingly secretive about it.  
  
And then Karkat, one afternoon, abruptly offers to show John some of this hidden supernatural world.  
  
“I’ll need some of your blood to do it,” the monster warns John. “And you’d be bound to me until we return, but it’s not like I’m just going to use you as my personal meat puppet in some pathetic attempt to regain my own freedom or anything like that. That would be ridiculous.” Its grin is swelling. “Shut up and give me your blood, human. You want to see it for yourself, don’t you?” When John opens his mouth, Karkat rampages onward. “They only come out once in fifty years, you know. You could search forever, waste your whole life looking for another shot at this, even though I’ve seen it dozens and dozens of times—“  
  
“Karkat—“  
  
“—and it must be so _terrible_ , to want something so badly and not ever be a part of it. It’s only for tonight, I checked, and this is a one-time offer, John Egbert. I’m sure I’ll be done showing you mercy in another week, and then if you even asked to see a fucking toadstool, I’d just rip you limb from limb—“  
  
“Karkat!” John has to shout a little to make the demon actually listen to him, and then Karkat looms over him, black as night and boiling with menace.  
  
“Your answer, little human?” It all but purrs. “ _Do you entrust yourself to me?_ ”  
  
“Yeah,” John says. “Got a knife or anything?”


	3. Don't Move; I Need to Remember You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someday legit plot will be reached. Will it only be in your imaginations? Will it be deftly penned from my fingertips to your eye sockets? Will it involve sass?
> 
> Only time can tell.

Plainly, this was not the response Karkat was looking for. Also the smoke monster does not have a knife.  
  
John sighs through his nose so Karkat will know being ridiculous makes this a lot more complicated than it needs to be. He then sets out searching for a sufficiently pointy rock. “But,” Karkat splutters, floating along after him. “But—I mean—you trust me? Of course you do. Um.” John is sort of wiping his hand against the cave wall, grimacing as it fails to do any significant damage, but still manages to hurt like a bitch. Suddenly he’s turned around. His feet aren’t involved, given they just lost contact the cave floor.  
  
Karkat’s smoke is wrapped around him, and it doesn’t exactly feel like being touched, but it’s not quite like air either. It’s stickier, colder; like water that’s nervous about skin. Karkat manages to be a lot more intimidating like this. “ _Why?_ ” It demands.  
  
John gives the demon a somewhat flat smile. “Because,” _it’s obvious_. “You want to think I don’t trust you, so if you do trick me, I’ll be expecting it and it’s fair. But I do, so you won’t. Get it?”  
  
“Kid, I think my eyes just fucking crossed,” Karkat answers. “You saying I’m supposed to show you mercy if you’re an idiot?”  
  
“I’m saying you’re predictable,” John answers, “And not very evil for a demon. Also, I may actually need to leave to get the knife.”  
  
“No need,” Karkat mutters, and John is moving, drawn closer in a cloud of smoke. “Perfectly serviceable fangs right here.”  
  
“Oh, gross,” John whines. “Dude, I’ve seen how you eat. Seriously, no—“ But apparently Karkat now has to prove how demonically evil it is, because it ignores John’s protests and bites down into his elbow. Not going to lie; it smarts. John hisses, but keeps still—Karkat’s fangs are each roughly the size of a lampshade and _boy_ are they solid compared to the rest of the smoke. He really doesn’t want to mess Karkat up in the process of putting a hole in John.  
  
Karkat withdraws. John rubs the skin, which tingles fiercely. Not a bite to be seen. How does that work? The demon is bubbling, though, and red veins climb through the smoky surface. John tracks them down Karkat’s side and through the tendrils holding John aloft. John suddenly feels very dizzy.  
  
“Easy,” Karkat murmurs to him. “It’ll pass. Aura adjustment kind of just has to suck.” John nods wearily, and doesn’t resist as plumes of smoke buoy him higher. His hair is blown back. That is as far as he is aware of them leaving the cave. He’s busily trying not to throw up and the bright summer sky does not help while his vision is doing all sorts of weird pulsating, colorful things.  
  
“Okay, never mind. Put me down,” John decides, because solid ground might help.  
  
Karkat just snorts. “This drop would kill you.”  
  
_Good_ , John thinks nauseously. “I will throw up on you,” he says instead, which Karkat ignores.  
  
Eventually, they’re settled down on a tree branch. John’s weight sink against the trunk, though numerous blackened coils remain hugged around him, should John prove inclined to fall over like an idiot. John is feeling a bit better by now, enough to be disappointed he missed the flying, but he supposes there’s the return trip. He scrunches his eyes apart.  
  
“Oh,” John says.  
  
The patch of forest they’re in is frozen in one of those moments of transient, breath-taking beauty. The sunlight streams through the leaves at exactly the right angle to turn them to gold. Pale light dapples even over Karkat, and the leaves whisper and sway and everything is green, green, green in a way that would make John suspect Karkat knows his favorite color.  
  
He is somewhat relieved not to have his cellphone, because he would miss the beauty if he tried to take the picture he itches for. “What are we waiting on?” He asks Karkat, whose coils tighten around him like it had forgotten John could speak and then relax again.  
  
“Nightfall. Shh.”  
  
Maybe just this once John can risk the familial censure.  
  
He watches the forest floor go from abundant green to silvery-blue under the moonlight, the shadows expand into wide, unfathomable pools. The leaves sigh deeper sounds, weighty with twilight secrets. It gets colder and John shivers a little before his body heats up—Karkat hisses at him again—“shh”—and John stares with renewed focus. After a moment, the demon frames John’s sight with black tendrils, and guides him to look up. Pockets in the foliage let the moonlight through.  
  
The moonbeams wriggle in midair.  
  
John’s mouth hangs open.  
  
As he stares, the glow squirms to life. It kicks slender legs up before it fractures back into light and its heat mirage body becomes a tiny little streamer that soars through the air not half a foot away from John’s nose. He doesn’t even breathe. Like a ribbon, almost, but with hundreds of tiny gossamer jellyfish legs wheeling away under it as they swim through the air. His glasses glint at the wrong angle, but then there’s another—another—  
  
“What,” John breathes.  
  
There must be hundreds of them.  
  
“Star people,” Karkat murmurs. “That’s the human name. Not that they have anything to do with the stars whatsoever, but no one will accuse your ilk of common fucking sense.”  
  
He nudges John. “Look.” And John loses his breath all over again.  
  
Suddenly calling them star people makes perfect sense. Not because they are born out of moonlight blessed by the exact hour of the Earth’s turn, and the right cloud, and the magic ley whatever—or because they glow, or because they are little and stunning in the night.  
  
When they dance together along the forest floor, they fall into an easy, concentric harmony, and they fly apart, collapsing fractals and patterns, endless ripples, and John thinks that they dance specifically the way it feels to look at light. Everything else goes blurry. Even the air—puffs of cloudy mist move up from their circles as they dance, until there’s a column of it easing into the sky. John breathes in, and it’s a feeling somewhat like having held his breath for too long, when the mist sifts into his lungs. If Karkat had a hand, he would have to hold it.  
  
He watches forever. He does, until he’s yawning helplessly with every breath (a surprising development; since when does John have a stable enough sleeping schedule that it can be disturbed?) and Karkat curls around him and gravity forgets all about them. It’s automatic for John to lean in, eyes fixed on the star people, holding onto handfuls of Karkat smoke—until he blinks and the dancing is gone, replaced by the wide, pinprick landscape of the night sky. John feels like a star himself. Everything glows.  
  
And that’s not just because he’s pale enough to be a disgrace.  
  
John smiles up at the wheeling darkness, glowing between his ribs and without a single thought reaches out and touches the strange smoke plumes where Karkat’s face is. No mouth at the moment, eyes like neon, and he can feel it a little better than the clouds around him. More concentrated, maybe. He pushes his fingers through the spiderweb silk of it and Karkat is abruptly looking down at him.  
  
“Why are you sad?” Karkat asks, and that just makes John laugh harder, surprised.  
  
“I’m not!” He throws his head back and the wind winds through his hair, strokes his bare throat, and there’s a glowing dance in his eyelids, pulling his mouth up until his cheeks feel sore. “I’m really, _really_ not!”  
  
They plummet—John barks another burst of laughter in surprise, and Karkat swoops him back up again (seriously, the smugness just radiates).  
  
“I know, it’s obvious. You’re not containing yourself well.”  
  
“Nope,” John says happily.  
  
“It shouldn’t be this fucking obvious,” Karkat says. They billow back up over the treetops and there’s John’s uncle’s farm. It’s shrunken. “What keeps making you so sad all the rest of the time—?”  
  
But the demon doesn’t get any further because then John looks up and Karkat doesn’t finish its thought.  
  
Once they land at the cave, predictably, it sets John down without any treachery. John’s head spins and he nearly falls—he can feel something leaving him, some part that he mourns without knowing what it is, because it sat with him in the glow of the star people. Karkat catches him before he hits the cave floor as John breathes, tries to get his bearings straight enough to stand up and walk home.  
  
“Stay the night,” Karkat tells him. John shakes his head. Has to get home.  
  
“It’ll be easier,” Karkat says. “You’ll get used to it. Stay the night, stay every night. A little blood is no price to pay at all, is it; and then we can both be free whenever we want.” A cool billow of smoke brushes over his face like the caress of a hand. “You can be happy. I’ll show you everything you could ever want to witness. Stay.” Its voice aches, and John is certain that if his eyes were open right now, Karkat would glare and swear and never sound so fervent.  
  
“It’s more complicated than that,” John murmurs, and his lips feel like paper. “I can’t.”  
  
Karkat’s voice burns, low and insistent. “ _Stay_.”  
  
John stays the night. He lets Karkat pull him away from the cave entrance and deeper, to where the shards of a broken vase sit untouched, and behind that, where Karkat reclines.  
  
He did not notice before, but it’s not that he warms up against the cold—Karkat does. Heat climbs through John’s skin and he’s completely wrapped in hug-heated smoke before he knows it, floating, and like this the dizziness is imperceptible and he’s only flying. He thinks, in his dreams, he feels a deep, reverberating pulse, something that all but pulls his bones apart. He knows if he opens his eyes, Karkat’s heartbeat will be gone.  
  
When he wakes up, it’s well into the morning and his aunt and uncle are going to be worried and he tells Karkat goodbye.  
  
“Don’t come back,” Karkat spits at him.  
  
“You don’t mean that,” John accidentally says out loud, and a roar follows him out of the cave.  
  
\----  
  
When John does come back, though, Karkat neither disintegrates him nor steals his body nor bites him or anything else. The demon ignores John passionately for four hours, and the quiet is a welcome change of pace after having been scolded the past few days about irresponsibility and how sleeping outside is dangerous and what sort of idiot he is exactly.  
  
When the silence ends, Karkat has crowded into John’s personal space. Smoke wraps all around him, coats him in this inexplicable feeling of softness. It’s hot today. Karkat cools until John feels like there’s a breeze at his back and someone reading over his shoulder. There’s this… thrum after a while. Either Karkat is purring, or—  
  
“…Did I fall asleep?” John mumbles.  
  
“Shh,” Karkat growls. A waft of smoke puffs irritably at John’s forehead.  
  
“Mm.  Only like five more minutes,” John swears, but only half of the words make it out.


	4. It's Only a Breath or Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **WARNING DANGER ALERT**
> 
>  
> 
> This chapter contains NOOKIE. Given that the story was not rated for nookie (an oversight on my part; when I started posting this, the nookie was written), BE WARNED.
> 
> For those who wish to generally avoid nookie but be involved in the ongoing weird demon/human romance and angst extravaganza, the next update's chapter note will contain a brief summary of pertinent nookie events, such that readers can totes skip undesired nookie.
> 
> Undesired nookie is serious business and don't you forget it.

John is living out the novelization of his life. That’s the impression he gets. Underestimated kid meets wise supernatural entity who sees his potential and caters to his angsty little heart and true love and bean dip are had by all.  
  
Real world problems must assert themselves somehow.  
  
Karkat seems to know instantly, spilling up in a fearsome wall when John strolls in. The demon gives no reply John’s blithe smile and greeting. John settles at his spot on the wall, closes his eyes, thinks that maybe he’ll just nap here today; it is for the best if he and Karkat don’t talk. Softness envelopes him and John grinds the heels of his hands against his eyes.  
  
“John,” Karkat says, and he sounds very annoyed, but John is all but being suffocated in Karkat right now, like the night he stayed and Karkat protected him from the whole world. “What’s wrong?” “Nothing,” John says, and he lifts his hands, smiles to show he means it. Karkat’s unblinking gaze stares down.  
  
“John—“  
  
“Do you know how to dance?” John asks. He’s saying it as the first thing to pop into his head, throw Karkat off, and the demon rears back.  
  
“Are you kidding me? One thousand years and you think _that’s_ the skill I missed out on?” Karkat sort of flails when he’s mad. “There was a time when courtliness wasn’t just a huge joke, you know. When there was a proper way to show your respect, and not just all through lolz and memes and what the fuck ever. You wish you had half my style.”  
  
“Yeah, I do!” John says, with perhaps too much enthusiasm. He holds up his hands and wiggles his fingers in the smoke. “Teach me. Teach me your ways immediately, oh great Demon Lord.”  
  
“ _That’s_ what you want to learn?” Karkat groans, as though he expects John to ever stop making special efforts to confuse him and John’s smile is almost real for a moment, then starts pulling down because genuine emotion is not something he needs to deal with right now. Karkat goes still and John gulps back _don’t ask, please don’t fucking make me talk._  
  
And Karkat doesn’t.  
  
John is pulled upright. He lifts his hands outstretched like a zombie, preparing to try to dance with the smoke monster. Coils wrap around his hands over and over, blackening them until Karkat looks almost solid—and then is. Black as night, smooth—gloves, John realizes, and blinks as arms solidify from the smoke after that, a long, rigid torso. Legs, somewhere down there, but John isn’t looking; he’s staring up, wide-eyed, waiting for the first chance to see Karkat’s face.  
  
It is a very interesting face. Thick eyebrows make the eyes frown, and they’re the same red they’ve always been, but the fire is shaped into pupils, has eyelashes, and blinks down at John’s nose. Mouth so wide it makes the rest of the face look gaunt, though it’s not, really. Then the square jaw, the shaggy hair. The glare reshapes every footnote of vanity into something that John really could spend a very long span of time staring at. If Karkat wasn’t holding his hands, he would have to poke this face.  
  
Karkat gives his new head a little shake, sending ragged shanks of hair trotting down his cheeks (John did not really realize how long Karkat’s hair was before it does the swishy thing), squints, makes a face, and lastly, squeezes John’s hand. He has horns. They’re very little, and his skin is a sort of storm-cloud gray, just as soft.  
  
“Why are you so tall?” John complains, wrinkling his nose. “That’s unnecessary. I’m tall enough for the both of us. Pick something shorter.”  
  
“This is the same corporeal form I’ve worn for centuries,” Karkat snaps at him—his voice, comfortingly, is the exact same rasp-growl it has always been. “I’ll thank you to shut up and appreciate the lengths I am going to.” When John shifts, Karkat makes a rumbling sound in the back of his throat and releases one hand to press his palm to the small of John’s back. “ _I’ll_ lead,” Karkat says sharply, and John shrugs. His lesson, he supposes.  
  
“Fine,” John agrees. He’s going to step on Karkat’s feet a lot and that way, he will enjoy the shouting this results in. “Let’s see your old man dance.” Karkat’s lip curls. His human face cannot conveniently _not_ have a mouth at will, so there’s no hiding it and John snickers with glee. “I knew it,” he exclaims with a sigh of satisfaction. “You do think I’m funny.”  
  
“I think you’re _ridiculous_ ,” Karkat says, and then he steps forward—John half-stumbles back and Karkat’s hands are placed just so to catch and steady him. Karkat huffs. “Quit that. Lean into me.”  
  
“Bluh.”  
  
But he does anyway, not because Karkat is growling and domineering, but because he knows what he’s doing and after a while, when John has failed remarkably well to step on toes and the moving has generated a sort of music that makes the awkwardness go away, it is very, very easy to lean into Karkat. They are two stately gentlefolk. The cave is a ballroom. Karkat does not do anything so preposterous as dip or twirl John, but when John stutters his heel over a badly-placed rock, Karkat doesn’t hesitate, just sweeps him up at the waist, high enough that John feels like the Lion King Reference Goes Here. It’s so gracefully done it’s offensive. John comes to earth again confused about gravity and Karkat is not doing a very good job of hiding his smile. He reclaims John’s hand, leads him, sweeps him through the arcs until John is dizzy and impulsive and everyone knows what becomes of impulsive young people. He shouldn’t have asked about dancing.  
  
There’s a knot of anger and that sticky feeling of guilt and he just wants to feel _better_.  
  
Karkat goes very still when their lips touch, stiffening under John’s hands. John shouldn’t kiss him again right away, eyes shut tight. Shouldn’t lean up for closer, harder, not wanting it to be over in these scarce seconds before he is disgusted with himself. Shouldn’t be that guy. He pulls back with a smile plastered on his mouth because he has screwed up again, ha ha, just like usual, and has a burn in his throat. Karkat is just staring down. Crimson eyes wide and angry, gray mouth set in a harsh slash, and John gets another hopeless little jolt that nearly makes him lean in again.  
  
“Sorry,” he says, because that is probably what he’s supposed to say and that resurrects the demon.  
  
His solid, strong hands are on John’s jaw in an instant, yanking him in. Their mouths collide like a slap. John presses up, angry about anger in this, the way he has to tear his hands back from Karkat to brace them against the wall Karkat just shoved him against. Karkat devours him like it is a simple thing to fuck with his head, and he must be very good at kissing, because all John is aware of is a roar in his ears and _pressure_. John grabs a handful of the immaculate black jacket Karkat wears, bunches it in his fist, bites down on Karkat’s lip—and Karkat takes his hair and makes him gasp, stunned, full of smoky taste, an extra tongue in his mouth, licking in slow. It’s fire and it doesn’t stop until John’s brains have been turned to ash, until his hands fucking shake as he searches for ways to pull Karkat closer. Karkat stops just as abruptly as he started.  
  
“You are basically kissing a suit of clothes,” he tells John warningly, and John’s heart lurches. “I’m _not_ human.”  
  
“Don’t care,” John decides, and since that doesn’t count as a very good protest, he wraps an arm around Karkat’s neck and tries to resume breathing him in. Karkat meets him there. He’s so mean about it. Like he can’t feel it unless he’s gripping John hard enough to bruise. John likes that, likes that it’s kind of dickish, that it gives him the excuse to get angry back, clawing and shoving and driving himself forward against the brick wall that is Karkat.  
  
John’s mouth is numb and Karkat’s hair is spiked and tangled under his searching fingers—there is smoke spilling from Karkat’s skin and the pupils of his eyes have edged out, spreading flame through the sockets. John rolls his hips forward. Karkat makes a deep, predatory sound, and he pries John away from the wall like a bulldozer, stumbles them back. John just tries to keep up and then Karkat sinks his sharp teeth into John’s neck.  
  
John chokes at the pain, groans. Shouldn’t feel good. He’s at the point where it feels good. He’s seeing stars. “ _Fuck_ , Karkat—“  
  
Karkat’s mouth parts from his neck and he licks, tongue warm and too long. John’s neck just feels numb and warm. Just the roar in his ears. John’s blood rushes south with renewed fervor.  
  
If Karkat kisses him again and nothing involves itself with his dick, John is going to cry. To this point, he reaches down to adjust his crotch. Karkat yanks John’s hand back, slides his leg there, bears down as they kiss. John swears stupidly into it, tries to pull Karkat closer by anything he can get his hands on, bucks so hard he nearly rolls them over. It is blind instinct to reach between Karkat’s legs and Karkat swears, hisses at him as John determines that, well, _that’s_ not quite right—  
  
His other hand is shoved down to join the first, gripped tight by Karkat’s weight. “Just worry about yourself,” he growls, and John answers by shoving up to his mouth, kissing until Karkat is half-stunned. When this time a hand drives down on his cock, it’s enough of a shock to make John moan. He lasts from frustration and anger and the sharp hunger in Karkat’s kisses, all of it refusing to let him down, let him rest, let him think. Karkat kisses pure fire down him and works him like a toy—all push and yank and wind up—and when John gets off, that’s hard enough to hurt and Karkat’s eyes go all steely satisfaction as he watches.  
  
All the thoughts in John’s head crawl out the top and go away. He’s aware of smiling like an idiot and the way Karkat leans down to press his forehead against John’s, heavy and patient.  
  
"I have you," he promises.  And then he promptly resorts to coercion.  "Stay."  
  
"Kay," says John.


End file.
